


Redheaded Brunette

by flib



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Colourblind!Dex, Gen, at least a little, dex doesn't know he's a redhead, disclaimer: i'm not colourblind, realistically someone on this team is colourblind, they're all just doing their best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-06 00:10:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13399239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flib/pseuds/flib
Summary: Dex is colourblind and no one has ever told him he's a redhead until now.





	Redheaded Brunette

Dex’s whole family had varying shades of boring brown hair or so he thought. He never understood why some people stared at his head. He figured it was the big ears or black eyes that he occasionally sported from hockey or wrestling with his brothers. Sometimes he wanted to ask people what they were looking at but he didn’t actually like having black eyes so he stopped himself. The Poindexters all had pretty short tempers, which people called fiery for some reason, but their parents instilled politeness and manners towards strangers unfortunately so he couldn’t just go up to someone outside of a hockey game and give them what for.

It wasn’t until Family Weekend in his sophomore year that Dex realised that there was something different about his hair. An offhand comment from Bitty confused him and he asked why he’d commented on his brother’s hair.

“Oh, I was just surprised that you guys have different hair colours. They’re pretty unique.”

“Uh, sure, Bits.” Maybe it was a weird blonde versus brunette thing?

“Not that that’s a bad thing of course!”

Somehow both Bitty and Dex seemed more confused about their point in this conversation.

“I just didn’t really realise that your colour existed in the same genes as his?”

This conversation was making even less sense as it went on. Dex decided for now to write it off and ask Nursey or Chowder about it later. Maybe Bitty had had too much to drink or something at his lunch with his mom.

Dex had been aware that he was colour blind since he was a small kid. It ran through his mom’s side of the family. His grandpa was colour blind and so was one of his brothers so it wasn’t highly surprising that he had trouble differentiating reds from greens and browns. A lot of colours merged to green for him which left him occasionally confused. Really, it wasn’t something that he talked a lot except when buying clothing and anything else that could clash. He ended up with a lot of blacks and blue and the occasional red. Nothing that could really fit together too weirdly. 

He wasn’t sure the team other than Chowder knew he was colour blind until the incident. The incident makes it sound dramatic but really it was a heated debate about the colour of his favourite flannel. He had thought it was green from the shade he saw but it was red apparently. It was impossible to see the difference between the shades of muck he saw. A lot of things were a blur of a few colours resulting in him ending up looking stupid until he told them that he literally couldn’t see the difference. It all ended up being weird shades of green and khaki to him anyway.

Chowder moved on pretty quickly with some gentle teasing about red being his favourite colour because he wore it so much even without being able to see it. Dex usually brought Chowder clothes shopping with him after that to prevent accidentally buying red pants and a yellow shirt for the same outfit. 

Unfortunately, no one told had him that his hair wasn’t brown. He had assumed that it was brown because pretty much everyone on earth had brown hair except Lucille Ball. He had thought the Ron Weasley jokes in high school were because of his stubbornness and huge family and the Anne of Green Gables jokes were due to his short temper. It took Chowder and Nursey pointing it out to him when he was 19.

“Bitty thinks it’s weird that Cameron and I have different shades of hair? Is it because his whole family is blonde or something?”

“Maybe? Yours is pretty brightt so I guess he expected Cam to be the same?” Chowder shrugged.

“Why though? It’s not like he expected Whisky and his sister to the same hair colour.”

“Yeah, but red is a little more unusual.” Nursey had barely looked up from his book to acknowledge Dex for most of the conversation. “I guess he thought since one of you is a full ginger the other one wouldn’t be strawberry blonde.” 

“Ginger?”

“Redhead. Carrot-top. Auuuburn if you’re fancy?”

Dex really was confused now. “I’m not a redhead.”

Chowder put a hand over his mouth to stifle a laugh and Nursey finally looked up.

“How did you not get bullied for this as a child?”

“Because I have brown hair?” 

“Dex. I will buy you those colour correcting glasses purely so you can see your own gingery red hair. Seriously, how can you not know?”

“Maybe my family all has red hair and no one thought to tell me. I don’t know how someone outside of the family wouldn’t mention it though?"

Chowder giggled. “Me neither. Man, that hair is like cartoonishly orange. Your brother’s is at least kind of rose gold.” 

“Fuck me. I guess I finally understand the Anne Shirley jokes.”

“No, that’s the affinity for puffy sleeves.” Chowder held his hand up for a high five from Nursey as he said it.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not colourblind or a redhead but my last boyfriend was both and genuinely didn't seem to know he was strawberry blonde. He definitely was. Also can you imagine the team messing with Dex's clothing? They're honourary frat boys of course you can. 
> 
> I really had to fight myself into not using some of the meaner terms for redhead that are usually used here in Australia.


End file.
